Are reports of alien abduction more common than you think?
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Norris awakens and senses the presence of some kind of being nearby. It reaches out and touches his forehead. He finds himself floating up to the ceiling. He is no longer in his room and can see stars through the porthole-like windows in what he realizes is an alien spaceship. A small crowd of grey humanoid creatures closes in around the operating table he is lying on, and he sees that they are holding sharp and shiny implements. He begins to scream, and struggles but can’t avoid the sleek metal snake they slide up his nose. The pain is unbearable and the creatures continue to do unspeakable things to him. It seems to go on forever. Eventually Norris awakens in bed, feeling shaken and uncertain of what has just happened. He has a feeling that he has been given telepathic instructions to forget the events that he had just experienced. Over the next days and weeks, the memories of this experience enter his awareness and create anxiety and feelings of panic. The first time this happens Norris is twelve years old, and it is October. For years he has a similar experience every year in the fall.
While there are many variations on alien abduction reports, most occur at night after the abductee has fallen asleep (Appelle, Lynn, Neuman, & Malaktaris, 2014). The core features of the alien abduction experience include being captured and taken to an alien craft where the abductee is subjected to an examination that may be physical, sexual, or even spiritual in nature. The abductee may also be given a tour of the craft or be taken on a journey to another realm. They may also be given telepathic messages, then returned to earth. These abduction experiences often leave troubling aftereffects that are physical and/or psychological in nature (Appelle, Lynn, Neuman, & Malaktaris, 2014).
It is difficult to determine how many people have had these experiences. According to surveys cited by Appelle, Lynn, Neuman, & Malaktaris (2014), 36% of the population of the United States believes that unidentified flying objects are actually alien spacecraft. Another survey found that 3.7 million Americans have had some form of abduction experience but the survey items allowed for the inclusion of experiences such as sleep paralysis that may not have been intended by the survey participants to be considered actual abduction experiences. One figure that has been cited is that about 2.5% of the people in the United States believe that they have been abducted by space aliens.
While many abduction experiences are reported as having happened after the individual went to bed, others have been reported as having occurred in various circumstances such as while the person was hiking in a forested area or was driving home late at a night. It is hard to pinpoint the very first alien abduction report, but an often-cited one is that of Barney and Betty Hill, an interracial couple who were involved in the civil rights movement. It is a familiar story to those who have studied the alien abduction phenomenon. This event occurred during the early sixties (September 19, 1961) as the couple was driving through the White Mountains of New Hampshire late at night. During their trip they had observed what appeared to be a bright object following them and when they got home felt that something very bad had happened to them. They also felt that they were missing several hours of time from the trip. Of note, this event occurred to them while they were likely under a great deal of psychosocial stress, were most likely sleep deprived, while on a trip through an isolated part of the country, and at a time of heightened tension and fascination with the accelerating destructive power of our weapons during the Cold War.
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